The first month of the new year has come and gone, and it was a fairly average submission month for me. I always feel like I should send more submission out, you know, because I totally should, but half a dozen ain’t terrible. Let’s dive in.

Thank you for submitting “Story X1” to XXX. We appreciate the chance to read it. Unfortunately, we don’t feel it is a good fit for us and we’re going to have to pass on it at this time.

Thanks again. Best of luck with this.

Super standard form rejection from a top-tier market. Not much to see here, but I discuss this particular rejection in more detail in this post.

Rejection 2: Submitted 1/6/17; Rejected 1/6/2017

Thank you so much for thinking of XXX. Unfortunately “Story X1” is not quite what we’re looking for at the moment. Best of luck placing it elsewhere.

Another rejection for “Story X1.” Yep, this one is a same-day rejection and also was part of a multi-day rejection with the last letter. I admit, that shit used to bother me a lot more. Now? Not so much. My toughened rejectomancer hide is all but numb to the form rejection at this point. 🙂 Anyway, I discuss this rejection in more detail here.

Rejection 3: Submitted 1/14/17; Rejected 1/19/2017

Thank you for submitting “XXX” to our Flash Doom contest. We were very happy to see such high-quality submissions. The judging process is never easy, but this one was tougher than most.

Unfortunately, “XXX” was not selected for our Top 10, but we very much enjoyed the chance to read it.

Thanks so much for your participation. We couldn’t do these contests without you.

This is a standard form rejection from The Molotov Cocktail for one of my three submissions to the Flash Doom contest. And, yes, they’re totally cool with me naming the publication here. They’re a great zine, and I have nothin’ but love for Molotov.

Rejection 4: Submitted 1/14/17; Rejected 1/19/2017

Thanks so much for entering our Flash Doom contest. As always, we had so many great entries.

Unfortunately, your entry “XXX” did not make it into our Top 10. However, we are happy to report that the piece did make it through several rounds of cuts and was still in consideration until the last stages of judging. As a result, we’ve given you a “Close But No Cigar” shout-out on our Flash Doom results page (https://themolotovcocktail.com/).

We encourage folks who didn’t quite make the cut to think about submitting those pieces for consideration in our regular issues (free to submit). We’ve published a good number of them that way in the past.

Thanks again for your participation, and for writing such an entertaining story.

Another rejection from The Molotov Cocktail for the Flash Doom contest. This one fell into the “close but no cigar” category, which makes this a higher-tier rejection, I suppose. I submit a lot of stuff to The Molotov Cocktail, and they publish a fair amount of it. How much? Ten stories so far.

Rejection 5: Submitted 1/21/17; Rejected 1/28/2017

Thank you for the opportunity to read “XXX”. Unfortunately, the story didn’t fit our current needs. Best of luck placing it elsewhere.

This is a form rejection from a new market, one I hadn’t tried before. They’re an audio market that publish writers from the Pacific Northwest, so I figured I’d send them a reprint as an opening bid. Most audio markets are cool with reprints since they publish in an entirely different format, so they’re not really reprints to them. Anyway, I’ll send these guys more stuff in the future.

Rejection 6: Submitted 12/7/16; Rejected 1/31/2017

Thank you for the opportunity to read your story! Though “XXX” did make our final voting round, unfortunately we’ve found it is not a good fit for our upcoming issue. We wish you the best of luck finding a home for your story elsewhere. We would love to see more from you in the future!

What we have hear is a nice, encouraging personal rejection from a pro-paying market. It’s always a bit of a bummer to know you got close to an acceptance but didn’t make the final cut. Still, this tells me the story might have legs and that I should send it out again as is, which I’m totally gonna do. I’ll also be sending this publication more of my work. Hey, they said they wanted to see more, right?

Acceptances

One acceptance in January from my old pals at The Molotov Cocktail.

Acceptance 1: Submitted 1/15/17; Accepted 1/19/2017

Congratulations! Your Flash Doom entry, “An Incident on Dover Street,” has made our Top 10 as an honorable mention. This means that it will be published in our upcoming Flash Doom mega-issue (to run on January 20th) and it will be included in our third annual Prize Winners Anthology print edition this fall.

Publications

Another trunk story that started out as a flash fiction piece, was expanded into a short story (and rejected a few times), then shrunk down again into a flash piece again and submitted, accepted, and published with The Molotov Cocktail. A bit if weird path to publication for this one, but I’m thrilled it has found a home.

Well, that’s my January. How has the new year been treating you? Tell me about it in the comments.

Thanks for sharing. As of January 31, I had 13 submissions (5 carried over from 2016). I’ve received 3 rejections and one acceptance. (Publication at a later date.) I’m impressed by how quickly you heard from the publications. Most of the groups I’ve submitted to respond after 6 months.

Hi, Shelley. Thanks for commenting. Looks like you had a productive month. 🙂

As for response times, it’s really a mixed bag. This batch of rejections just happened to have quick turnarounds. That said, I find that most markets for horror/sci-fi/fantasy tend to get back to an author within 60 days (at least the markets I regularly submit to). There are outliers of course. I ‘ve got two submission pending that have gone over 90 days.

In December I had a story accepted for publication 955 days after submission. In January I had one accepted 811 days after submission and another 892 days after submission. I’m glad I learned to stop holding my breath awaiting responses.

On the other hand, my third January acceptance came 8 days after submission.

I like to think I’m a patient guy, but two-plus years?! 🙂 Just curious, did any of these markets communicate with you at all during the waiting period? Like, did they send you a further consideration letter or anything?

The pair of publications with the three long response times are edited by the same person, and the editor has accepted more than 100 stories since the last time she rejected one (some of the acceptances coming within a day after submission). With that many consecutive acceptances, I tend to believe giving a little slack on response times is acceptable when the response, when it comes, is highly likely to be an acceptance.

I also tend to have so many ms. making the rounds at one time that I sometimes forget which stories are sitting in editors’ inboxes awaiting responses.